I have that recipe, the fortified electrum headguard. It is Heavy Armour so you won't be able to wear it. There is another helm that looks similar, Marauder Elite Headgear, that is also an orange crafted one.

I would say that yes, they in fact did balance the class which was inherently bugged to begin with. Not the bug where other mercs tracers was amplifying damage but the bug in which tracers were actually adding x2 the damage boost to Heatseeker that it should have, even when solo. That is why it hits for less than pre 1.2 and unquestionably one of the main factors in the arsenal tree being bottom tier now as it was not factored in testing for the rebalance in 1.2. The class has plenty of other problems going right now and always has done, no real utility etc however this change totally killed the class.

I too quit today for all the reasons that the OP posted. This game is no longer fun to play and is extremely imbalanced. The Commando/Merc is BY FAR the worst class in the game in both PvP and PvE. I am warhero/battlemaster geared for PvP and also blackhole/rakata geared for PvE and it is so annoying to see rerollers kicking *** with the current flavour of the month classes in scrub gear as fresh 50's while I have to bust my balls to even have a small impact in a WZ or OP. I have waited several weeks and I will no longer pay for incompetence from the developers. The rated Warzones will not be far away now and who in the hell would want to play a Commando/Merc when that happens. Bioware will never get the game into a state of balance that is enjoyable in time. I will save myself the frustration and also keep my money.

Mercs/Commandos are absolute trash in PVP right now, by far the worst AC in the game. Even Pyro spec is bottom tier.

So if the damage is now correct for these abilities, how long was it incorrect for? How long have your play testers been playing with a class with broken abilities, providing information which then feeds into meetings for balancing the class? I ask because right now the class is obviously below par in both PvP and PvE and from what I can see, I must gather that in previous test and balancing the information from your internal testers just does not correlate with how the class is to play on live right now. I say that as I cannot believe it is a purposeful design decision to have a class which has next to no utility and such weak DPS when compared to other classes in the game.

The past couple of weeks it seems that the community pretty much on the whole agrees that mercs/commandos are bottom of the pile in pvp right now and I would agree with them. They are just not a viable class at all and as soon as serious ranked premades begin with cross server games, the class will be shunned by many and lead to a lot of unhappy merc players. Yes pyro is the best spec for a merc/commando to play as for pvp however even that spec is barely viable when compared to what most other classes can do. The impact and group utility of the others classes when compared to the merc leaves the merc in the dust. Arsenal spec is completely broken right now and really needs some attention. It is very concerning that there has not been a quicker response to fix arsenal after the debacle of the 1.2c patch.

I switched to pyro like yourself after running Arsenal ever since I hit 50 and started running flashpoints and ops. Since swtching I have done Denova storymode and KP Nightmare and it was fine. The two specs feel to me like they are at least equal in damage output, pyro may even be doing more. The standard blasters attacks hit so hard when CGC procs and burnout really comes into its own on a boss with high hp, helping to burn through that last 30%. That is something that will not show on the target dummy properly. Add to that the extra mobilty and less casting times required and this allows for sustained DPS even while moving which is very good in Denova especially. I will be staying pyro for now, at least until they fix arsenal.

The armor debuff is broken now, they didnt fix it they flat out broke it.

Mercs/Commandos are absolutely terrible now. They have always not been top tier as a pvp class but now they are by far the worst in the game. It is a joke how bad they are.

There has always been a discrepancy there between the Mercenary and Powertech AC's for Bounty Hunter but after the recent changes that gap is now huge. Mercenary's are absolutely terrible in PVP now and by far the worst class. Going pyro with a merc is better than going arsenal but it still is nowhere near as good as a Powertech pyro.

Exactly! I and many other Arsenal spec players (ex-Arsenal as the spec is the worst in game now) have damage which is much lower than 1.1 and yet personally my gear has much improved, a whole suite of augmented gear in addition to starting on gathering black hole gear. PvP crits are not reliable to gauge a skill due to factors such as expertise differences inflating damage done. So I will restate my point, the class was re-balanced with a broken skill affecting the statistics by buffing damage and now that they have fixed the bug the tree is destroyed and needs adjusting to make up for it. Heatseeker was meant to receive a 10% buff yet its around 15%-20% lower than it was in 1.1. It is really so broken it cannot be mistaken.

No, the situation is not good and Heatseeker is not fine. The rebalancing of the class for 1.2 was fundamentally flawed from the very beginning. They re-adjusted damage values for 1.2 with the bug still in effect and now that they have fixed this bug, the spec needs rebalancing properly with accurate DPS figures which were not flawed from the get go. Arsesnl spec is now the worst by a great deal for a Merc or Commando to run with.

Well, there is no other option for me but to switch to Pyro permanently now. The reduction in overall DPS is huge in the arsenal tree compared to 1.1 and I don't think it would even be better than pyro for PvE DPS anymore. So pyro is king for PvP and on equal footing for PvE DPS with arsenal now. No point playing as arsenal if you like to PvP anymore AT ALL!

TTK is way better now in 1.2 than in 1.1. The only people who don't like it are healers who miss dominating warzones in the old set up.

Yes it is definitely broken. Straight away with the first missle I noticed the damage decrease and at first I thought that in order to fix the identified problem they had reverted the skill back to pre 1.2 status rather than fix the problem. Then after doing more tests with my ops dummy on my ship, I realized that it is even worse than that. Seriously, until this is fixed switch to pyro as the skill is completely broken.